What is TEALS?
BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, is delighted to be working with Microsoft and The Hg Foundation to bring TEALS to secondary schools in the UK. The program helps teachers, particularly non-specialists, by pairing them with volunteers from industry who can boost subject knowledge in the classroom, enrich student learning, and accelerate the professional development of computing teachers.
TEALS has been running in the United States since 2009 and has helped over 100,000 students receive computer science learning pathways. It is also operating in Canada, Mexico, Israel, Colombia, Kenya and India.
Volunteers help departments to increase their computing capacity and advance teacher’s subject knowledge and capabilities, creating a lasting impact. The support volunteers provide is planned and under the direction of the teacher with each volunteer supporting a class, each week, across a school year.
To date we’ve worked with 10 schools and 30 volunteers across five areas of England – Manchester, Walsall, Reading, London, and Torbay and the insights we’ve gained from this first year of the programme is supporting our expansion of TEALS to more schools, volunteers, locations, and regions of the UK.
We’re building a community of TEALS teachers and volunteers in the 2024-2025 academic year and we’re looking forward to welcoming more schools and volunteers who are passionate about computing to the programme, helping to extend the reach and impact of TEALS in the UK.
TEALS for schools
BCS supports schools participating by helping to recruit volunteers from industry, conducting Enhanced DBS checks and training to prepare volunteers to go into schools, and assisting you and your volunteers to work as a team for you and your students.
Benefits to schools include:
Diversity
A more diverse delivery team through the range of TEALS volunteers
Collaboration
An increased feeling of ‘family’ in the classroom with a teaching team collaborating together
Content
Teachers can adjust their schemes of work to include shared contextual content
Opportunity
Enhanced enrichment opportunities through links to the volunteer’s employer
Flexibility
Increased dynamics and flexibility in delivering lessons through effect deployment of volunteers to support targeted groups of students
Download our brochure
Find out more about the TEALS UK Programme by downloading our brochure below
DownloadTEALS for volunteers
Volunteers are the backbone of TEALS. They enrich students’ understanding of computing, provide real-world context for learning, and bring to life a range of career possibilities.
Benefits to volunteers include:
Professional development
Continued Professional development sessions ran by BCS
Expand your CV
Gain valuable experience to expand your CV
Download our brochure
Find out more about the TEALS UK Programme by downloading our brochure below
Download
Inspire
Inspire and Influence the next generation
